The new York Times published an article today on Ethereum giving the upstart rival to Bitcoin some mainstream publicity.
Ethereum was created by a 21-year-old Russian-Canadian, Vitalik Buterin.
From the article:
Joseph Bonneau, a computer science researcher at Stanford who studies so-called crypto-currencies, said Ethereum was the first system that had really caught his interest since Bitcoin.
It is far from a sure thing, he cautioned.
“Bitcoin is still probably the safest bet, but Ethereum is certainly No. 2, and some folks will say it is more likely to be around in 10 years,” Mr. Bonneau said. “It will depend if any real markets develop around it. If there is some actual application.”
It seems that many major corporations are starting to look at Ethereum, companies like JP Morgan have been fascinated by blockchain technology. The article does mention that many companies are creating their own private blockchains and that could “ultimately detract from the value of the individual unit in the Ethereum system — known as an Ether — that people have recently been buying.”
The price of Ethereum has risen over 1,000%, from the article:
Since the beginning of the year, the value of an individual unit of Ether has soared as high as $12 from around $1. That has brought the value of all existing Ether to over $1 billion at times, significantly more than any virtual currency other than Bitcoin, which had over $6 billion in value outstanding last week.
The article is well worth a read if you are interested in these kinds of technologies.
